The makers of Dead Space take over for the third entry in EA’s co-op shooter series, but is it really true that everything’s more fun with friends?

Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel (360) – conscientious objector

There is no way we can pretend that Army Of Two is a bad game. Not this new sequel, nor either of its two previous iterations. It is however a game so offensively bland it depresses us far more than if it had actually been broken but more ambitious. Inspired by accountants, designed by marketing men, and bought by those who don’t care what they play as long as it’s got guns in it. Army Of Two puts the meh in mediocre.

A game like Medal Of Honor: Warfighter has a similar air of manufactured banality but Army Of Two gets away with many of the same faults for two appropriately unremarkable reasons. The first is the two-player co-op campaign and the second is the fact that third person mercenaries are still slightly more novel, and more versatile as a theme, than first person military shooters.

Not that there’s anything even remotely imaginative about The Devil’s Cartel, or the faintest pretence of having an engaging plot or characters. That the two protagonists are called Alpha and Bravo should tell you all you need to know about the game’s storytelling aspirations, while the subtitle is as complex a summary as you’ll need for the plot (assuming you don’t take it literally and expected demonic drug runners, which is far too interesting a concept for this kind of corporate product).

What is surprising about The Devil’s Cartel though is that it has two new leads, with the previous two, Salem and Rios, now reduced to supporting roles. To judge by our interview with the game’s producer this seems to be a reaction on EA’s part to the fact that many found the frat bot style humor (very much spelt without the ‘u’) of the originals distasteful.

We found the idea of brofisting your partner after massacring a horde of poorly-defined enemies as eye-rollingly inappropriate as anyone but at least it was evidence of some sort of personality – even if it was a unlikeable one. The Devil’s Cartel removes that lone defining feature and replaces it with nothing whatsoever, just a script even more devoid of humour and humanity.

In fact for a franchise with so few unique features it’s fascinating how efficiently this new sequel files them all away. It’s Dead Space developer Visceral Games that’s doing the sandpapering, inexplicably brought in to take over the series from EA Montreal (although they did help out with the first two).

The concept behind Army Of Two has always been a non-sci-fi version of Gears Of War, and mechanically it all works perfectly well. Sometimes you don’t seem to stick to cover quite right, but the ability to shift positions while still ducking down works well. The problem is though that on normal difficulty it’s often unnecessary to take cover, so little challenge do the hordes of apparently suicidal bad guys offer. Much of the time they seem barely aware of your presence and will quite happily run right past you to get to your partner.

Previously one of the series’ most important features has been the aggro system, which encouraged you to draw fire away from your partner and towards you, but that’s been completely removed. There’s also no back-to-back shooting sequences either, or any moral choices, and the weapon customisation system has again been shorn of the originals’ coarse wit.

The only compensation for the removal of these features is a bog standard rage system, which once you’ve filled up a meter makes you temporarily invincible and gives you infinite ammo. If you activate it at the same time as your partner then it goes into slow motion too. An idea so innovative and exciting we can only imagine how many lunch breaks it took to come up with.

The Devil’s Cartel’s primary ambition seems to be acting as an encyclopaedia of action game clichés. Big set piece moments such as manning a minigun in an on-the-rails helicopter section and breaching a door in slow motion are served up without any hint of irony or self-awareness. While it’s a revelation to find that even drug cartels have a fetish for peppering their battlegrounds with explosive red barrels.

If you’ve somehow never seen these clichés before then we suppose they could still hold some novelty. But that implies you’ve never played a shooter before and if you’ve gone this long without dipping your toe we very much doubt Army Of Two will make you want to come back for more.

But what frustrates us is that we can’t mark the game down any more than we have. As game fans it appals us on every level but there’s nothing actually wrong with it. Apart from too many bugs (particularly when it comes to the artificial intelligence) and a lack of content (the main campaign is about seven hours and there is no competitive multiplayer) this doesn’t do anything wrong on a technical level.

The Devil’s Cartel is exactly what it is supposed to be: a safe, unthreatening shooter meant to appeal to as many unassuming casual gamers as possible. It’s the gaming equivalent of daytime television and the very definition of average. With no personality, no soul, and no ambition we can only advise that people avoid it so that they don’t end up the same way.

In Short: A masterpiece of mediocrity and a crowning achievement in unambitiousness. The Devil’s Cartel has sold its soul, not to Beelzebub but to boardroom suits and focus groups.

Pros: The shooter action works well and so too does the cover system for the most part. It’s almost impossible not to make a co-op campaign fun…

Cons: …but The Devil’s Cartel tries its best with some of the most insipid and uninspired action this generation has ever seen. Lots of minor bugs, particularly with the artificial intelligence.